There are many ways to measure the depths to which the
Cleveland Browns’ franchise has sunk as of December, 2017. You could count
quarterbacks or head coaches, offensive coordinators or general managers. You could even count owners. Mostly though it’s just been the losses. Losses and more losses and then more after
that. It used to be that this team could
be counted on to win 3 games a year. Now
it can’t even win three games in two years.
Too many to count at this point have had a hand in creating
the single worst franchise in all of professional sports. Yet the alarming, almost inconceivable
consistency in making the exact wrong decision every single fucking time is
perhaps the best way to capture not just the ineptness that is the Browns but
the serial incompetence that permeates each and every pore on each and every
coach, player and front office worker, that has seeped into the brick and
marble, wood and stone that hold together the Berea complex.
You’d think that simply going full tilt George Costanza and
doing the opposite of what their instincts otherwise tell them is the right
thing to do would be enough to at least make this franchise competitive. But at its core those in charge, from owner
Jimmy Haslam on down, lack even a modicum of Costanza’s fleeting self-awareness. Not to be too impolite here, but they are
just too stupid to recognize all that they don’t know.
That’s why it should concern the few remaining chuckleheads
with an interest in this team’s success that newly hired general manager John
Dorsey shut down any talk about head coach Hue Jackson being fired at season’s
end. Let me give you two data points.
In 2006, in this very same space, I wrote that Romeo
Crennel, then head coach, had to be fired.
It was clear that Crennel had lost the team and that its trajectory was
headed, again, in the wrong direction.
You don’t need to look it up.
Crennel won 6 games in 2005 and 4 in 2006. He held on to his job anyway. The next year he took the Browns to their
Browns 2.0 high water mark by winning 10 games, a record grossly inflated by weird
scheduling quirks that gave the team the easiest schedule in the NFL that
season. Still it was a real glimmer of
hope even if the Browns didn’t make the playoffs that year. But the flaws in the team were apparent when
a 10-win season gave them a tougher schedule the following year. Crennel and the Browns sunk back to 4 wins and
he was fired for all the reasons that still existed two years later: he couldn’t
control the team, he was disorganized.
In short he proved out exactly why after having such success as a
defensive coordinator no team but Cleveland was willing to make him a head
coach.
Meanwhile, by hanging on to Crennel, the Browns lost two
more seasons to progress, two more seasons of choosing the wrong players for a
system that wasn’t going to last anyway.
Fast forward, but just a little bit. After Crennel was fired, then owner Randy
Lerner jumped at the chance to hire Eric Mangini about 5 minutes after Mangini
had been fired by the New York Jets.
Mangini flamed out in New York for much the same reason he can’t get
another head coaching job today. He’s arrogant
to a fault without a scintilla of accomplishment to justify it. Mangini came in and alienated players and
fans before he even had a chance to rent a place to live. He was allowed to
essentially hire his own boss as the general manager and then summarily fired
him and acted as his own general manager instead. A wave of poor personnel decisions inevitably
followed. His first season was a
disaster and not just because he won only 5 games. He was a dick to the players and the media
which only served to create further separation between a struggling team and its
way-to-loyal fan base.
Late in the season even Lerner could see that the wheels had
fallen off and decided that this team needed a real “football” mind. He brought in Mike Holmgren, not as the head
coach, but as the team’s effective CEO.
Holmgren was a good concept poorly executed. He had a chance to observe Mangini’s
pettiness in action and while nearly everyone thought Holmgren would fire Mangini
and replace him, Holmgren, in a fit of empathy as a former coach himself,
decided Mangini should have another year to prove himself, never mind the
smoldering embers of a franchise that already had been lit on fire once again.
All that did was delay, again, putting this franchise on
better footing.
One of the lessons of these two episodes is that holding on
to the wrong coach in the pursuit of continuity is as much a fool’s errand as turning
over a team’s personnel department to a group that had never made a football
decision in its life. Stability,
continuity, consistency, whatever you want to call it, is a laudable goal. But it shouldn’t serve to obscure the fact that
if things aren’t right they’re wrong.
The question now, of course, is whether Jackson should
retain his job. Those arguing for him
point out the obvious: this team has the worst collection of players ever to
grace any NFL roster ever. Those calling
for his firing point out the obvious:
Jackson has the worst record of any head coach ever. It’s the most Cleveland of dilemmas,
complicated, of course, by Haslam bringing on a general manager and yet giving
him no authority to find a coach that can win a game.
Maybe Haslam is just tired of paying coaches no longer on
the payroll. Maybe Haslam is just being
Haslam, meaning telling someone what he wants to hear in the moment. But the most likely explanation is that
Haslam meant it when he said it. Which,
as it usually does with Haslman, means that it may not be true the next
moment. He’s as impetuous as anything
and everything associated with the Browns.
It would be useful if that could be counted on just one more time.
Jackson should be fired.
There’s no way to know definitively but I doubt that any other coach
currently in the NFL would have ended up with only one win in two years. The roster is as bad as it looks each
week. Outside of Joe Thomas there isn’t
another player on this team who would be a sure starter on any other team in
the league. But not every loss has
simply been an issue of talent. Jackson is overmatched. He’s not a good enough
head coach even if he was just concentrating on being a head coach. Acting as his own offensive coordinator has
been a colossal failure but more to the point is that Jackson lacks the
self-assessment skills to realize it.
You could literally cite any game in Jackson’s tenure to
make the point but just look at Sunday’s loss to Baltimore. Crowell had 1 carry in the first quarter that
went for 59 yards. He had 6 more carries
the rest of the game. Jackson may be
calling plays but it can hardly be said that he’s coordinating the
offense. There is no theme, there is no
approach. It’s almost as if he doesn’t
watch game film on the upcoming opponent to create a plan of attack.
There’s probably a more practical reason, however, that
Jackson will get fired: attendance. Losing
so much for so long has deteriorated the base of this franchise. There was a point where it looked as if
nothing would keep Browns fans from the ‘80s from filling the Stadium no matter
how bad the product got. That’s not
true. Indeed what is true is that
attendance has continued to deteriorate and the clip, just since Haslam arrived,
has accelerated.
During Haslam’s tenure, this team has lost around 59,000
fans year over year. To put that in
perspective, the attendance at Sunday’s game against Baltimore, the last home
game of the season, was a little over 57,000.
In other words, Haslam is losing the equivalent of another home game’s
worth of attendance. That’s not just
money out of his pocket. It’s costing other
NFL owners as well. Haslam must account
for that to his brethren. Always a short term thinker anyway, expect Haslam to
choose the quickest path in front of him and fire the coach. It will create a year’s worth of enthusiasm
if nothing else.
Fundamentally, though, the issues are more
systemic. Jackson’s firing will probably
feel like a pardon to him and the fans who have no one else to complain about
on a regular basis. Jackson will survive
in the league as an assistant somewhere and the Browns will once again find
another coach, another system and another start. But the fixes that need to get made are
longer term in nature and start with Haslam.
He’s a terrible decision maker, at least when it comes to football, and
he needs to embrace his own level of incompetence. If he truly believes that John Dorsey is the
right football person to run the team then, dammit, let him run the team. Change the org chart. Let him hire a legitimate head coach. Make everyone report to Dorsey and Dorsey to
Haslam. Then Haslam should sell the house in Bratenhal and commute every Sunday
from Tennessee. It really is the only
hope.
